A tribute to and catalogue of the works of Alexander "Hugin" Wieser, founder of ambient black metal band Uruk Hai and many other side-projects, including Hrossharsgrani, Hrefnesholt, Elisabetha, B-Machina, Ceremony of Innocence and more!
Here you will find my thoughts on his work and details on the releases as drawn from items in my personal collection, forming a fuller catalogue of his work than is currently available elsewhere online

Wednesday, 14 October 2015

ATLANTIDA

Band: RAVENCLAWTitle: AtlantidaFormat: A single silver disc CDr that was specially created for Nazgul by Hugin in September 2015, following dramas encountered with the Atlantida Volume 13 compilation CD. For more details, see preceding post! Bespoke colour cover, housed in a black wallet case.Edition: 1 copy

Track Listing:01. Atlantida 2:57

You join us hot-foot on the trail of the mysterious lost track of Atlantida, last spied off the coast of Volume 13 of the Atlantida compilation featured in Nazgul's last post. To quickly recap: old Atlantida CDr throws a wobbly on the final track, necessitating an emergency trip via Austria to obtain a copy of the exclusive song to complete the circle and reveal the mysterious city of gold. Possibly I'm getting my stories confused at this stage, but the point is that the previously unplayable final Ravenclaw song is now accessible, and it's all systems go from hereon!

Let's cast a beady eye over the artwork - Ravenclaw's band name splashed across the top in what Nazgul tends to think of as 'Bathory' font (I guess some form of Gothic font is a more accurate description), with a fiery circle over water (or is it the earth aflame - answers on a postcard to the usual address) combining the forces of nature with the Viking passion for pillage and wanton destruction. Rather good, actually, and certainly whetting the whistle even more ahead of pressing the play button to give this disc a spin.

The song kicks in: lapping waves against the side of a boat, the sound of a pounding drum to set the rhythm of the oars. It's all shaping up to be an epic longboat quest to the hidden realm of Atlantis. Cue some thumping percussion, throaty shouts, screamed vocals, and a splash of salty brine and we're off to adventures new! According to Plato's writings circa 360BC, the Hellenic gods of old divided the land so that each god might have their own lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it was sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal.

There's all manner of fluidity around the supposed dates of the sinking of Atlantis, let alone the issue of whether it was an actual place at all or just a political allegory. The connection to Vikings is equally disputable and tenuous, depending which timeline you ride your armoured horse down. Let's set all that to one side, and simply revel in the imaginary sight of a longboat full of fur-clad Vikings, armed to the teeth and headed by our resolute Ravenclaw heroes Ruslanas and Hugin, bearing down on the fabled island with the crazed fervour of a true Berserker....

A corker, no less, and a real case of 'go-Viking or go-Home'. And yet, on repeat listens, it begins to dawn on Nazgul that this is a familiar song, one that's definitely been heard before albeit in times long past. But how can that be, given the exclusive tag appended to this track on the Atlantida 13 compilation?

The answer, my friend, isn't so much blowing in the wind as it was hitting Nazgul over the back of the head. You see, the Atlantida compilation (although undated) must have been released in around 2001 based on the dates of demos from the bands featuring upon it. So the addition of 'Atlantida' as a bonus track only for this CD was entirely true at that point, and remained so right up until the release of the first full Ravenclaw demo "Where Mighty Ravens Fly" back in 2002, where the self-same track appears with the fuller title it subsequently held: 'Atlantida (Fighting For Atlantis)' ! Oh yes, that's right, knew I'd heard it before somewhere: sheepish grins all round, and all that....

Hugin had been far too polite to comment on Nazgul's absent-mindedness of course, and had very kindly burned off a one-off copy of this song (presumably with the thought, 'poor old sod, doesn't know what he's doing any more' to accompany it!)

Mind you, look on the bright side: when did we ever enjoy back-to-back entries from Ravenclaw on Honour and Darkness? And, to be absolutely fair, that Ravenclaw demo was reviewed back on 10 March 2009, which is an astonishing 6 years and 7 months (or 2,409 days) between entries. It's hardly surprising that Nazgul has forgotten the odd thing during that time, is it?!

It's quite scary looking back so far into the history of Honour and Darkness, actually. The Ravenclaw "Where Mighty Eagles Fly" was the 26th post in the Blog's history; this current epistle, on the other hand, is post number 719. That produces an even more alarming statistic: that for the last six and a half years Nazgul has been turning out an ode to Hugin in this Blog on average once every three and a half days!